Free ZumoCast App Streams Music, Movies From Computer To iPad, iPhone

A new app launched today should go a long way to eliminating iDevice storage limitations. ZumoCast is a free app that lets users stream content — videos, music or images — from their computer to their iPad, iPhone or iPod.

I’ve spent the last few days playing around with an advance copy, and I’m pretty stunned with how well this app is put together. Streamed movies are transcoded seamlessly on the fly in the background, and streamed music sounds fantastic — even over 3G. The whole thing is also incredibly user-friendly, works with a minimum amount of fuss and does things like automatically import your iTunes playlists. Content can even be downloaded from your computer to your iDevice, and it also allows browsing, viewing and downloading documents.

And surprisingly, it’s completely free.

I spoke briefly with company CEO David Zhao yesterday, and he said that additional features, like the ability to share content with other users, will be added in the future as purchasable options; the app itself, however, will remain free.

Zhao’s company, Zecter, is the same outfit responsible for ZumoDrive, a cloud-based service that also streams content to mobile device; the difference, of course, is that while ZumoDrive stores users’ media in a cloud, ZumoCast allows users to stream stuff directly from their own computers.

No full evaluation yet (for instance, streaming movies over the Internet — which the app is apparently capable of — hasn’t been attempted) but we’ll have a full comparison with other apps (like Air Video) up soon.